An eyebrow lifted. “That’s all you have to say?”

“How about, I’m sorry.”

“Are you kidding me? You’re sorry?”

“You look well, Sara. I’ve missed you.”

“Don’t even try. And you look like hell.”

“Oh, this is one of my better days.”

“Michael, what are you doing here? I thought I’d never see you again.”

He searched her face. Did she know? “What did Peter tell you?”

“Just that you’d been arrested and you had a gash in your head.” She lifted the bag a little. “I’m here to sew you up.”

“So he didn’t say anything else.”

She made a face of disbelief. “Like what, Michael? That they’ll probably hang you? He didn’t have to.”

“Don’t worry. Nobody’s getting hanged.”

“Twenty-one years, Michael.” Her right hand, the one not holding the bag, was clenched into a fist, as if she might strike him. “Twenty-one years without a message, a letter, nothing. Help me understand this.”

“I can’t explain right now. But you have to know there was a reason.”

“Do you know what I had to do? Do you? Ten years ago, I said, That’s it, he’s never coming back. He might as well be dead. I buried you, Michael. I put you in the ground and forgot about you.”

“I did some awful things, Sara.”

At last the tears came. “I took care of you. I raised you. Did you ever think of that?”

He rose from the bunk. Sara let the bag drop to the floor, raised her fists, and began to pummel his chest. She was crying in earnest now.

“You asshole,” she said.

He pulled her into a tight embrace. She struggled in his arms, then let him hold her. The guard was watching them warily; Michael shot him a look: Back off.

“How could you do this to me?” she sobbed.

“I never wanted to hurt you, Sara.”

“You left me, just like they did. You’re no better than they were.”

“I know.”

“Damn you, Michael, damn you.”

He held her that way for a long time.

—

“That’s quite a story.”

It was late morning; Peter had cleared the office. He and Apgar were seated at the conference table, waiting for Chase. A short retirement for the man, thought Peter.

“I know it is,” Peter answered.

“Do you believe him?”

“Do you?”

“You’re the one who knows the man.”

“That was twenty years ago.”

Chase appeared in the door. “Peter, what’s going on? Where is everybody? This place is a tomb.” He was dressed in the jeans, work shirt, and heavy boots of the cattleman he had announced his intention to become.

“Have a seat, Ford,” Peter said.

“Will this take long? Olivia’s waiting for me. We’re meeting some people at the bank.”

Peter wondered how many of these conversations he was going to have to have. It was like leading people to the edge of a cliff, showing them the view, and then shoving them off.

“I’m afraid so,” he said.

—

Alicia saw the first mounds just outside of Fredericksburg—three domes of earth, each the length of a man, bulging from the ground in the shade of a pecan tree. Riding on, she came to the outermost farmstead. She dismounted in the packed-dirt yard. No sounds of life reached her from the house. She stepped inside. Furniture overturned, objects strewn about, a rifle on the floor, beds unmade. The inhabitants had been infected as they’d slept; now they slept in the earth, beneath the pecan tree.

She watered Soldier at the trough and continued on her way. The rocky hills rose and fell. Soon she saw more houses—some nestled discreetly in the folds of the land, others exposed on the flats, surrounded by hard-won fields of newly tilled soil. There was no need to look more closely; the stillness told Alicia all she needed to know. The sky seemed to hang above her with an infinite weariness. She had expected it to happen like this, at the outer edges first. The first ones taken up, then more and more, an army swelling its ranks, metastasizing as it moved toward the city.

The town itself was abandoned. Alicia rode the length of the dusty main street, past the small stores and houses, some new, others reclaimed from the past. Just a few days ago, people had gone about their daily lives here: raised families, conducted business and trade, talked of small things, gotten drunk, cheated at cards, argued, fought with their fists, made love, stood on the porches to greet their fellow citizens as they passed. Had they known what was happening? Did the fact creep upon them slowly—first one person missing, a curiosity barely remarked on, then another and another, until the meaning dawned—or had the virals swooped down in a rush, a single night of horror? At the southern edge of town, Alicia came to a field. She began to count. Twenty mounds. Fifty. Seventy-five.

At one hundred, she gave up counting.

* * *

51

The day moved on. Still Dory did not die.

From the room where the woman lay, Caleb heard only small sounds—moans, murmurs, a chair shifting on the floor. Kate or Pim might appear briefly, to fetch some small implement or boil more cloths. Caleb sat in the yard with the children, though he had no energy to amuse them. His mind drifted to undone chores, but then another voice would speak to him, saying it was for naught; they would soon be leaving this place, all his proud hopes dashed.